Biography

Professor A. Sathasivam (1926–1988) was a distinguished Tamil scholar and linguist from Vaddukoddai, Jaffna. Educated at the University of Ceylon and later at Oxford University, he was the first Tamil scholar from Sri Lanka to earn a D.Phil. from Oxford for his research on the Structure of the Tamil Verb. Over a career spanning more than two decades, he made pioneering contributions to Tamil grammar and Dravidian linguistics, particularly through his groundbreaking hypothesis on the relationship between the ancient Sumerian language of Mesopotamia and the Dravidian languages of South Asia, which he termed the “Kumari Family of Languages.” His scholarly works, including Sumerian: A Dravidian Language (1965) and Origin and Development of Tamil Words (1986), continue to influence linguistic studies today.